I'm a professional--a scholar of ancient Greek philosophy--making my obligatory intro post. I'm an ABD doctoral candidate working on Aristotle, but I'm also really tight with late Plato. My philosophical Greek is pretty fluent. I'm also friendly with Homer and Herodotus, but I shudder at the thought of Euripides and Aristophanes. My Greek feels rather "organic." I started out demotiki, then went on to the JACT "intuitive" method in my formal, collegiate years. I'd defend that method readily. I'm a "nom.--acc.--gen.--dat." person when it comes to Greek.

BUT...

I also have a taste for the old school. I like to describe my Latin as "apparatus criticus" level, but I'm here to make it REAL. I wanna try Latin the old-school way. The "nom.--gen.--dat.--ac.--ab." way. Cicero and Lucretius are my targets. I'm great with vocab., syntax, and tense. But I think North/Hillard are straight-up Sadists for starting out composition with sequence of tenses. I'm pretty sure that's a demonstrable waste of effort.

Anyway, I hope this is good enough to get my pressing question about North/Hillard comp. posted. For what it's worth, I'll exchange cool stuff like Timaeus knowledge for insight into sequence of tenses in Latin comp.

One last thing. I'm not anti-macron. But I defy you to explain to me the (supposed) phonetic difference between the 2nd and 3rd syllables in laudāre and exemplar, respectively.

Let that be an introduction. Look for my North/Hillard Comp. question...if all goes well....

Welcome! Always good to have some expert subject knowledge in the mix. I've was always into the ancient philosophy classes as an undergrad. They inspired me to start learning Greek, but unfortunately that wasn't until after I graduated... Reading Plato et al. in the original has been a treat, though.

If your Latin needs work, I'd suggest doing as much simple reading as you can in addition to composition practice. The 'old school' approach can be effective, but I can't imagine forcing myself to do composition without reading to relieve it. (I've never properly memorized the sequence of tenses, but I seem to get along just fine anyways.) Cicero's philosophical writings aren't very difficult (compared to his oratory), so that's a pretty good target. Once you've got the grammar down, you may want to start hacking your way through some parts of his dialogues.

I defy you to explain to me the (supposed) phonetic difference between the 2nd and 3rd syllables in laudāre and exemplar, respectively.

As far as I know, you pronounce the macron vowel for approximately twice the duration as the short one--that's about it.